well-placed conservative source has added an important clue to the
mystery of the Bush administration’s “outing” of CIA officer Valerie
Plame after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, became one of
the first Establishment figures to accuse George W. Bush of having
“twisted” intelligence to justify the Iraq War.

The source, who knows both White House political
adviser Karl Rove and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage,
told me that the two men are much closer than many Washington insiders
understand, that they developed a friendship and a working relationship
when Bush was recruiting Colin Powell to be Secretary of State.

In those negotiations, Armitage stood in for Powell
and Rove represented Bush – and after that, the two men provided a back
channel for sensitive information to pass between the White House and
the State Department, the source said.

The significance of this detail is that it
undermines the current “conventional wisdom” among Washington pundits
that Armitage acted alone – and innocently – in July 2003 when he
disclosed Plame’s covert identity to right-wing columnist Robert Novak,
who then got Rove to serve as a secondary source confirming the
information from Armitage.

This new revelation that Armitage and Rove worked
together behind the scenes also lends credence to Novak’s version of his
contacts with Armitage and other administration officials, both as Novak
sketched out those meetings in 2003 and then filled in the details in a
column on Sept. 14, 2006.

A week after Novak revealed Plame’s identity in a
July 14, 2003, column, he told Newsday that “I didn’t dig it out, it was
given to me,” adding that Bush administration officials “thought it was
significant, they gave me the name and I used it.” [Newsday, July 22,
2003]

In the Sept. 14, 2006, column, Novak wrote that
Armitage divulged Plame’s identity toward the end of an hour-long
interview on July 8, 2003. According to Novak, he asked Armitage, who
was then deputy Secretary of State, why former Ambassador Wilson had
been sent on the trip to Africa.

Novak wrote that Armitage “told me unequivocally
that Mrs. Wilson worked in the CIA’s Counter-proliferation Division and
that she had suggested her husband’s mission. As for his [Armitage’s]
current implication that he [Armitage] never expected this to be
published, he [Armitage] noted that the story of Mrs. Wilson’s role fit
the style of the old Evans-Novak column – implying to me that it
continued reporting Washington inside information.”

In other words, Novak is challenging the version
spun out in the last two weeks by Armitage and his supporters who have
claimed that Armitage let Plame’s name slip out “inadvertently,” almost
as gossip, and never intended for it to be published.

When I asked my well-placed conservative source
about that scenario, he laughed and said, “Armitage isn’t a gossip, but
he is a leaker. There’s a difference.”

Nevertheless, the Armitage version was embraced by
leading Washington pundits as the final proof that Rove and the White
House had gotten a bum rap on the Plame affair. Washington Post
columnist David Broder even demanded that those who had implicated Rove
in what appeared to be a dirty trick “owe Karl Rove an apology.”

But the new information from Novak’s column and my
conservative source points to a very different conclusion: that Armitage
was much more part of the White House team than the “conventional
wisdom” understood and that Broder and other big-time pundits were
snookered again.

Key Timing Question

Novak also contradicted the Armitage scenario on
another key point, that Novak supposedly had arranged the interview with
the help of longtime Republican operative Kenneth Duberstein. Instead,
Novak reported that Armitage’s granting of the interview came out of the
blue.

“During his quarter of a century in Washington, I
had had no contact with Armitage before our fateful interview,” Novak
wrote in his Sept. 14, 2006, column. “I tried to see him in the first 2
½ years of the Bush administration, but he rebuffed me – summarily and
with disdain, I thought.

“Then, without explanation, in June 2003,
Armitage’s office said the deputy secretary would see me.” [Emphasis
added]

Novak dated that call from Armitage’s office at
about two weeks before Wilson published his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed in the
New York Times, entitled, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” The time frame
of the call fits with when the White House was initiating a preemptive
strike against Wilson’s anticipated criticism of Bush’s bogus claims
about Iraq seeking uranium ore from Niger.

On June 23, 2003, also two weeks before Wilson’s
article, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, gave
an interview to New York Times reporter Judith Miller about Wilson and,
according to a later retrospective by the Times, may then have passed on
the tip that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA.

In other words, just as Bush’s operatives were
launching their smear campaign against Wilson by briefing “friendly”
reporters, Armitage reversed his longstanding refusal to meet with Novak
and “without explanation” granted an interview. During that interview,
according to Novak, Armitage encouraged him to write about Plame’s
identity, much as Rove and Libby were doing with other journalists
simultaneously.

After the Armitage interview, Novak got
confirmation about his highly sensitive tip – a covert CIA officer’s
identity – from Rove, who – according to my conservative source – had
been working behind the scenes sharing sensitive information with
Armitage since the earliest days of the Bush administration.

Despite all that’s been written on the Plame
affair, there has never been an adequate explanation of why the
President’s political adviser would ever have been granted access to a
detail as discrete and dangerous as the identity of a CIA officer, the
kind of information that is traditionally disseminated only on a strict
need-to-know basis.

In this case, that “need to know” may have been
that the Bush administration put discrediting and damaging Joe Wilson
ahead of protecting the identity of a covert officer and her undercover
operation, which involved investigating the spread of dangerous weapons
in the Middle East.

These new clues in the Plame mystery suggest that –
contrary to Washington’s “conventional wisdom” which holds that
Armitage’s confession clears Rove and the White House of wrongdoing –
Armitage may have simply been another participant in the ugly scheme.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from
Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at
secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine,
the Press & 'Project Truth.'

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